


Elves in Love

by Evandar



Series: Elves in Love [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, F/M, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the divide between Elves and Dwarves is smaller than they want to believe. These are some of the Elves who bridged it, and some others who nearly did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elves in Love

**1.** His Dwarf is one of the quieter ones. He has a cocky swagger and an insolent smirk, but he keeps his thoughts to himself and a watchful eye on the younger, dark-haired Dwarf who never leaves his side.

 

He is not, strictly speaking, ‘his’ Dwarf. Glorfindel has not spoken to him, nor has the Dwarf given any sign that he has realised he and his companion are being watched. They are calm, relaxed, and the younger one’s laughter fills the air. His Dwarf – Glorfindel is not sure of his name, so that will have to do – has a softer chuckle, low and rich. Glorfindel imagines that it would taste, if laughter can have a taste, like the pipeweed his Dwarf so eagerly smokes.

 

Laughter should have a taste, he decides. After all, fear does and war and death. (He knows well the taste of death.) His Dwarf’s pipeweed would be an excellent flavour for it, especially since his Dwarf seems so adept at eliciting it from his fellows. All it takes is a sarcastic quip or comment, and his companions (especially the young, dark one) all fall about hysterically, while he stands above them all, chuckling lightly and enjoying their good humour.

 

But while he may play the clown at times, it is not all he is. It’s something Glorfindel knows well – the joker-warrior, who hides his familiarity with battle behind merry songs and jests. He has to date counted twelve weapons hidden on his Dwarf’s small frame, and he does not doubt that they are tended to and wielded with skill. It is possible that there may even be more, hidden beneath his thick, fur-lined coat and tucked into his boots and tunics, but if there are then even Glorfindel’s sharp eyes cannot spy them from this distance.

 

Unfortunately, it is a distance he must keep. The Company of Thorin Oakenshield are a prickly bunch when it comes to outsiders, and no matter how innocent his intentions – a conversation, a name, perhaps a kiss to feel if moustaches felt as odd as they looked like would be – he would not be welcome amongst them, and it was not his place to upset the guests of Lord Elrond. Instead he must gaze from a distance upon hair as golden as his own and eyes that watch carefully even as his mouth draws more laughter from his fellows.

 

It is nothing more than curiosity, he tells himself, as he strains his ears for the next quip. There is never anything more pleasant than that between an Elf and a Dwarf.

 

 

 **2.** She hasn’t seen many Dwarves in her life. Of course, she knows that they used to live in the mountain, and that they fled their homeland. She even saw a few on the occasions that she ventured to Dale…but there weren’t very many occasions where she got to venture that far. Mirkwood is a sheltered kingdom, and her King keeps his people close and well-protected.

 

She hasn’t seen many Dwarves in her life, but even so, she knows that this one is special. He’s taller than the rest and with barely any beard to speak of. It seems that under all the hair and the armour, Dwarves are a beautiful race – and an eloquent one. As he speaks, he fills her mind with images of a red moon hanging low over a mountain pass, almost close enough to reach out and touch. There’s a light of wonder in his eyes at just the thought of the memory he possesses, and that is beautiful in its own right.

 

He is loved, this Dwarf. Tauriel rubs her thumb over the runes cut into his talisman. What they say, she does not know, but the talisman speaks of love and hope and that too is beautiful. She looks beyond his nervous smile when he speaks, and she hears moments of supressed laughter – the stories he isn’t telling. When she passes his talisman back to him through the bars, she sees relief and joy in his eyes, and the gratitude in his smile is blinding.

 

His fingers brush hers. They’re thick and callused and they linger just a heartbeat too long for it to be entirely innocent, and for that heartbeat Tauriel can see a red moon above a mountain pass, and stars as bright as fire.

 

 

 **3.** He was offered gems as white as starlight, of a purity that could not be matched by any realm left on this earth, and then refused them. Similarly, the true treasure of Erebor has been denied him: Thorin, son of Thrain, Prince Under the Mountain and fairest of all the Dwarves left in Arda.

 

Or so Thranduil has been told. He cannot see more than vague shapes and colours, and has not been able to since the War of Wrath where Ancalagon the Black unleashed dragon-fire upon the few warriors of Doriath who had chosen to stay West of the mountains. But even though the great dragon took his sight, it did not take his hearing. There is thunder in the voice of Thorin Oakenshield, and power. The power to persuade and to woo, to command armies and inspire suicidal attempts to steal from a dragon in its lair.

 

There is love as well, under his bitter words. Love for his people. It is not Thror who denies treasure this time, but Thorin – he denies himself and Thranduil knows even as he sheds his glamour and reveals his true face that he will not win. Thorin will go to madness and ruin and the Dwarves will lose him. They will lose their Mountain King. The forges of Erebor will not be relit; their halls will not ring with laughter and hammer-strikes. Silver fountains will spring no more, and star-white gems will be lost forever.

 

And Thorin’s voice will ever remain an echo of anger and betrayal in Thranduil’s mind.

 

 

 

 **4.** The toymaker with the silly moustaches and the wide smile that can light up a room without ever reaching his eyes is in town again. The Dwarves have learned their lesson from the death of Thorin Oakenshield and have started to trade freely in the city of Dale again, even though it is still being rebuilt. Part of the stone for that comes from the rubble left in the mountain by Smaug, and Dwarf-carvings, bold and square, can be seen on many of the new buildings being raised.

 

The toymaker is a common sight. He finds delight in the children who find delight in his toys. He laughs and jokes with children and parents alike, and only the sighs he makes when they turn away give hint of his sadness. There are no children yet in Erebor, and if he wishes to make a wage then the toymaker must come here. But…Elros doesn’t think that’s the only reason.

 

He recognises this Dwarf. Not just from his earlier visits to the city on behalf of his King, but from before then. This Dwarf was one of Thorin Oakenshield’s companions. He was one of the ones who escaped when Galion convinced him to renege on his duties – and ah! His ears still ring from that scolding – in favour of wine.

 

It is not only the lack of children he mourns, but those of his Company lost forever in the Battle of Five Armies. It is a sadness Elros feels as well, for many of his own friends fell in that battle, and perhaps that is what makes him approach. The Dwarf eyes him warily, but with no recognition. That is something, at least; his mistrust is one he shows for Elves in general.

 

Carefully, Elros plucks a wooden doe from the stand. It is excellently carved, displaying a care and gentleness that he hadn’t thought the thick hands of Dwarves capable of. Its slender neck is jointed at the base, and by pressing a small button on her flank he can make her graze upon the palm of his hand.

 

He suspects that the Dwarf overcharges him when he asks her worth, but he places his coins into a callused hand without complaint. He lets himself linger a little, to feel the warmth and the fire that he knows lives within the being looking at him so coldly, before he backs away and nods his head in thanks. And if, over the following years, he buys enough wooden deer to populate a forest, then that is his business.

 

 

 **5.** That so short a space of time can bring so miraculous a change in outlook makes Legolas wonder if any of his people have actually tried to see Dwarves as they truly are before. True, Gandalf told them all that the Elves of Eregion and the Dwarves of Moria had an accord, but that was an Age past with no trace of that friendship remaining beyond a now shattered door. Had they all been so blinded by coarse beards (that weren’t really as coarse as they looked, he’d come to learn) and gruff manners that they couldn’t see the wonders beneath

 

Had he been that blind? Truly?

 

Ai, but he had, and a mere sixty years past at that – and with Gimli’s own father in the Company he had arrested. And though Gimli claimed to have forgiven him his actions then, they had still spent a good six months dancing around the subject ere they arrived in Lorien and found comfort in one another’s company.

 

“What’s past is past,” Gimli has told him, and Legolas can see reason enough in that. They have a present to focus on – one filled with days of travel and nights of lovemaking, and beyond that a future. A brief, mortal future, but one that will burn as brightly as mortal lives were wont to; one that Legolas has decided to cherish for as long as he is able, until the sea has dulled his pains or he fades from grief.

 

His thoughts often turn maudlin in the night, these days. He wonders now if this is what Tauriel saw in Prince Kili; if it will hurt to die or if, by that point, he will welcome it. He wonders how Gimli, in whose arms he lies, will die. Old age or sickness? A mining accident? A cave-in in one of those confounded labyrinths he plans to build in Aglarond? How long will it take, after he is gone, for the grief to set in and destroy Legolas utterly.

 

He is not used to contemplating his own death, or that of others, yet now it comes to him as easily as stringing an arrow to his bow.

 

He curls closer to Gimli’s warmth and rests his head on his lover’s broad chest. He will comfort himself with the sound of Gimli’s heartbeat for the rest of the night, and he will dread its ceasing with each passing second.

 

 **Bonus:** He watches as Narvi leans in to study his plans for the door and studies the way that the young Dwarf’s hair catches the light. Such a rich chestnut deserves to be decorated, he thinks, with threads of gold and emeralds.

 

The Children of Aulë are somewhat touchy when it comes to their hair, he has learned. As a matter of fact, they treat it with the same sort of reverence that Elves do (though he has also learned to keep his opinions on such similarities to himself – touchy). It is lovers or kinsmen that they permit near it, and that Celebrimbor wants to be let near is something he barely dares to think about. He is already thought strange for building such an alliance with the Dwarves of Moria; to take one as a lover would no doubt take what little reputation remains to him and turn it to ash.

 

And yet, he desires. He can’t help it. Narvi is as gruff as all Dwarves seem to be, but he is skilled (Celebrimbor has seen his work before – spectacular! And somewhat relieving that there appears to be at least one Dwarf in Arda who knows that curves exist) and he has a sharp wit.

 

He also has rather a strong accent. Celebrimbor has come to like the sound of his name made guttural and staccato by Khuzdul.

 

When Narvi looks up at him, he fears that some of what he feels must show on his face, for Narvi stares at him dumbfounded for a moment. But then he smiles, shy and sweet and only a little teasing, and the tension that had been building between them all evening evaporates.

 

“Tell me what it says?” Narvi suggests, indicating the curling script that will arch above the door.

 

Celebrimbor leans close, placing his hand gently on Narvi’s shoulder and inhaling the rich scent of Narvi’s hair. He starts to read – first in Elvish, just for the scowl it will win him, and then in Westron. Narvi doesn’t push him away.


End file.
